What I really like when I shoot winter is that the photos come out almost black and white. If I want to turn them into B&W I have very little work to do.
I get this craving for black and white. I don't know why, what connections have been made in my head that I want that. I'm thinking because of Christmas. Where I live Christmas is a winter holiday, it always happens on December 25th.
Christmas invariably reminds me of my childhood and I get nostalgic. I think this is the cause of the desire for black and white, nostalgia, which in my imagination cannot be colored but also the fact that in my childhood all the images I saw in the cinema, TV, or magazines were in black and white!
So far this year, winter has only been one day! Around Christmas. I'm thinking of putting up some black and white photos that are inspired by these two important events right now, winter and Christmas, to choose one of these two themes...
The choice is not difficult. Christmas is associated with the color red, so that leaves winter for black and white!
We've had a "thin" winter day so far. The moment I woke up one morning to a thin carpet of snow over the neighborhood, I grabbed my camera and ran to the park down the street.
My street suddenly ends in a park. It actually "flows" into the street that borders the park. I remember that not many years ago this street was blocked, in winter, by piles of snow. Now the snow is barely visible...
The park is deserted. It's usually not. When it's not cold, most of the people who live in the neighborhood are mostly in the park. Those who have free time, that is the elderly and children. Most of them consider the park as an extension of their yard, which often leads to facts that outrage me. When, for various reasons, the park is deserted... I'm happy to walk there.
I like trees a lot. In the part of the world where I live, Eastern Europe, with a temperate-continental climate with slight Mediterranean influences, most trees are deciduous, i.e. not evergreen. These evergreen trees are very beautiful but a bit boring because of this. In contrast, deciduous trees are always changing, depending on the season, and I never get bored admiring them!
Of course, in "my" park there are trees in both categories, but the evergreens are much fewer.
The bare silhouettes of the trees make me think of all sorts of comparisons. The bare forest fascinates me! When I see these "cut out" images I imagine that the trees are the feet of animals and I seem to expect them to move, to run.
Then, when I look up to see the bodies of these animals, I see only the branches that seem to be hanging from the sky.
The park becomes a supernatural and slightly spooky place. I won't tell you what it's like at night, in the dark!
Then I remember it was just a park and my imagination went wild.
It is a beautiful park, built from the remains of a large forest. A forest that was "killed" so that a city could be built here. If I think about it, I wonder if these bare trees are not the ghosts of trees cut down in the past...
This is my entry for the #monomad challenge.
